Foreign Aid and Quality of Government

Author(s):  
Simone Dietrich ◽  
Matthew S. Winters

This chapter reviews empirical literature on foreign aid and QoG. The chapter begins with a description of how scholarship on foreign aid and QoG developed in conjunction with prominent debates in the development community. The chapter discusses three major debates: whether or not QoG moderates foreign aid effectiveness, whether or not donors give aid selectively based on QoG, and whether or not foreign aid undermines or can help build QoG. With regard to aid effectiveness, the most recent literature suggests that aid can be effective even under conditions of poor QoG. With regard to selectivity, the existing literature shows an increasing selectivity for overall aid flows since the end of the Cold War and provides evidence of selectivity in terms of type of aid. The evidence that aid undermines QoG is not as strong as has been claimed by some of the initial studies in this literature. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways forward for all three literatures.

Author(s):  
Sarah Blodgett Bermeo

This chapter applies the theory of targeted development to foreign aid and analyzes bilateral aid allocation from 23 donors to 156 recipient for the period 1973–2012. The targeted development framework predicts that donors will use aid where it can most benefit themselves by decreasing negative spillovers from underdevelopment, and that this concern with spillovers will have grown as globalization has increased. The analysis shows that in the post-2001 period, donors give more aid to nearby countries and to those that are linked to themselves through trade, migration, or historical ties. These countries have an increased likelihood of transmitting spillovers to the donor state. This marks a change from the Cold War period, when non-development considerations were leading determinants of aid policy. The analysis also shows that donors alter the composition of aid based on the quality of governance in a recipient, consistent with an attempt to increase aid effectiveness.


Author(s):  
N.V. Varghese

With the end of the Cold War political returns on foreign aid diminished.Many countries came to recognise trade as a more development-friendlymodality than aid. Internationalisation of higher education also shiftedfrom aid related cooperation agreements to market mediated cross-bordertrade arrangements within the framework of the General Agreementon Trade in Services (GATS). This article examines the changing face ofinternationalisation of higher education with a focus on the Indian experience.It argues that while internationalisation and cross-border mobilityare mediated by market processes and economic rationality in most countries,the Indian government’s initiatives to internationalise Indian highereducation are motivated by extending diplomatic relations to enable thecountry to play a more prominent role in global affairs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-393
Author(s):  
Andŕe Albuquerque Sant' Anna ◽  
Leonardo Weller

Did the threat of communism influence income distribution in developed capitalist economies during the Cold War? This article addresses this question by testing whether income inequality in OECD countries was related to events linked to the spread of communism—revolutions and Soviet interventions—around the world. We argue that the threat of the spread of communism acted as an incentive for the elites and governments to keep economic inequality low. This article provides an empirical contribution to the recent literature on inequality, which highlights the role of domestic institutions but ignores the role of the Cold War in redistributing income. We find a robust relationship between income inequality and the distance to communist events. The results, reinforced by cases studied, suggest that the spread of communism fostered income redistribution deals between domestic elites and workers. Finally, we show that these effects were reinforced by strong unions and the presence of strong communist parties.


1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 471
Author(s):  
Eric F. Petersen

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumitaka Furuoka

AbstractThis paper examines a new trend in Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy that emerged at the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the Japanese government adopted the "Official Development Assistance Charter," which obliged Japan to use its foreign aid to promote human rights, democracy, and freedom. Since the beginning of the 1990s, there have been cases when Japan imposed "human rights conditionalities" by increasing the amount of foreign aid to the recipient countries with good human rights records and reducing economic assistance to the countries with poor human rights practices. However, there remain doubts whether Japan is truly committed to use its aid power as leverage to ensure that democracy and human rights are respected by the governments of its aid recipients. This paper uses panel data analysis to examine whether the condition of human rights in aid-recipient countries has become one of the factors that influence Japan's ODA allocation. The findings reveal the lack of evidence to prove that the human rights condition in aid-recipient countries has influenced the allocation of Japanese aid.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
Surinder Mohan ◽  
J. Susanna Lobo

This article traces the impact of superpowers’ foreign aid on India and Pakistan during the early decades of the Cold War. It shows how the American policy-makers have drawn their initial strategies to bring India under the Western fold and later, when the Indian leadership resisted by adopting the foreign policy non-alignment, charted a new approach to keep it at an adequate distance from the Soviet influence—particularly by exploiting its food insecurity and inability to complete the five-year plans. In contrast, the Soviet Union extended project-aid to India which assisted it to build much required large industrial base and attain self-sufficiency in the long run. By adhering to the non-aligned doctrine, India not only managed a negotiable balance with the superpower politics but also extracted considerable benefits for its overall development. On the other hand, aligned Pakistan had shown least enthusiasm with regard to self-sufficiency and pursued policies imbued with militarism which ended up it as a rent-seeking dependent state.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Morrison

How does the internal organization of a foreign aid donor affect its aid allocation decisions? Despite the voluminous literature on the political economy of foreign aid, little systematic scholarship exists on this topic. This paper analyzes the allocations of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's lending arm for the poorest countries, to all eligible countries between 1977 and 2005. While factors such as a country's need and its policy environment have consistently impacted IDA's allocation decisions, other factors have changed in important ways. For example, IDA disbursements do not follow US aid disbursements in the post–Cold War period the way they did during the Cold War. And most strikingly, IDA's allocations have become tightly linked to debt owed to IDA's sister organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). While IDA used to shy away from countries with higher debt to the IBRD, the last two decades have seen IDA engage in apparently defensive lending for the IBRD, lending more to countries with outstanding balances to that institution. The results suggest greater focus on the internal structures of donors would yield insight into their allocation decisions.


1968 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alonzo L. Hamby

Several significant works on post-1945 American politics have dealt with the career of Henry A. Wallace. These studies have tended to depict Wallace as a one-dimensional character, either a fuzzy-minded idealist influenced and manipulated by Communists and fellow travelers or a wise and dedicated apostle of peace fighting a losing battle to prevent the Cold War. Both views have in common the assumption that Wallace stood for the same thing in foreign policy from the end of World War II through his Progressive Party campaign for the presidency. It is true that there were important continuities; there were also significant transformations in the content and quality of his thinking.


1991 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  

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